This files explains the dataset of FL bankruptcy records collected from U of M Law Library November 2007 by Paige Marta Skiba
This file was created Dec 15 2007 by Paige Marta Skiba.

FL Bkcy data notes:
stata datasets (1 for each district).

We are missing a few days:

April 1-12 1989 From MIDDLE FL. WOuldn't download for some reason.
southFLoct3195 is also messed up. WOuldn't download for some reason.

I created the dataset by downloading the data from each PACER bkcy court site into an ascii file. Then used sas
(see lotto.sas if interested) to read in the data to sas format. Then stat transfer to convert to stata10 format. Then 
bkcyread.do to read the data into stata and format it.

The dataset flbkcy.dta has all three districts. This has almost 3million observations. 
I included the individual district datasets too in case the flbkcy.dta was too big for you.

The variables we are probably most interested in are fname, lname, mname, addr1, ch (chapter), dfiled (date bkcy petition filed)
The variable "district" tells you which district (north, middle or south) the data came from.

Each record is *not* a person, but a party to a bkcy case.

Each record is a party to a case, which includes the filer, but also their creditors, so you will see some
fname or lnames like "SEARS" or "MASTERCARD."

Here is how we determinted which party was the actual debtor in our other paper:

"The raw PACER dataset and online documentation do not explicitly 
distinguish between debtors and creditors. Staff at the PACER Service Center helpfully explained that the first party
to be added to a case, who has the lowest value of an internal PACER identifier called the "party sequence number," 
is a debtor; and if a co-debtor is present, he or she has the second-lowest value of the party sequence number. We
assume that a second party is a co-debtor (ie, a joint filer) if his or her street address is nonempty and matches that of 
the first party". 



flbkcy.dta has 2827671 observations. Here is the district breakdown:


. tab district

   district |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
     middle |  1,410,940       49.90       49.90
      north |    164,529        5.82       55.72
      south |  1,252,202       44.28      100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
      Total |  2,827,671      100.00



